Faint Heart, Fair Lady
by sour gummies
Summary: SU. Robotnik's SWATbots ambush the resistance base, forcing the Sonic Underground to flee to Bartleby's estate as a last resort. The aristocrat reluctantly takes them in, but when long-overdue tensions boil over between him and Sonia, the two get caught up in the most explosive argument of their off-again, on-again relationship. An eavesdropping Manic may be in for a few surprises.


a/n: I won't make any apologies for this show. _Sonic Underground_ was really kind of terrible all around, even for a Sonic cartoon, which is quite an accomplishment. But there were things I liked about it, too—surprisingly enough, Sonia and Bartleby's relationship was one of them. So I wrote this. The second half (hopefully I can finish this in two parts, maybe three) should be up fairly soon, so stay tuned. R&R.

* * *

The dead of the night had once been Manic's favorite time to be up and about, as backward as it might seem to outsiders. Sundown was when _his_ childhood world really came alive: the thieves, the drifters, the people who knew they'd be judged and condemned by the unforgiving light of day. It wasn't pretty, that was for sure, but there was a certain gritty charm to the nightlife of Mobotropolis's underbelly that Manic still missed sometimes, when his brother decided to wake him up at six o'clock in the morning to plan for missions, or his sister sniped at him to be home by dusk for dinner and take off his sunglasses indoors.

That life had been a long time ago, though. Now, the cover of darkness was as much Manic's enemy as anybody else's, and he already had more than enough enemies as it stood.

It was much harder, for instance, to outrun SWATbots at nighttime than in daylight—for one, bots had infrared vision and hedgehogs didn't, and for the other it was _really_ starting to freak him out that he could hear them following but not see which direction they were coming from.

"_This way,_" Sonia's voice suddenly hissed at him from the darkness, and a delicate hand quickly covered his mouth before he could make a noise of surprise. "It's me, it's me! Come on, Manic, we're finding Sonic and getting out of here."

"Uh, that's great, sis, but where exactly is 'out of here?'" he asked, making the words deliberately sarcastic to hide how badly she had shaken him. "That was our only base that Robotnik just trashed, in case you forgot. And we already agreed that if we got separated, nobody would—"

"—would go to Sanctuary," Sonia finished tersely, leading him down the alley and checking around the corner of the brick wall. "We can't risk those ugly SWATbots following us back to the kids."

"So then, where are we..." Manic began, trailing off when it suddenly hit him. "Oh no. Not him again."

"Bartleby is the only one who can help us," Sonia said through gritted teeth. "You know that, Manic Hedgehog."

"Can't we just let ourselves get captured instead?" Manic whined.

His sister's only response was to drag him out at a run into the empty trash-ridden streets of Mobotropolis.

—

"You sure this is the right place?" Sonic grumbled, poking his head out from the center of a row of perfectly manicured hedges: as Sonia might have put it, Bartleby was rather_...particular_ about the landscaping around his home. Her brothers weren't quite so generous with their choice of adjectives. "There's so many flowers here that the smell is messing with my head! I'd almost rather take the smog around Robotnik's fortress."

Sonia gave him a stern look beneath the hood of her cloak. "Sonic," she snapped. "You should be ashamed of yourself! What would Mother think, if she could hear you talking like that?"

"Less jamming, more planning, you two," Manic snapped at them impatiently. He was jittery of being exposed out here on Bartleby's estate; aristocratic jerk or not, he'd feel a lot safer when they were all inside the guy's house where SWATbots couldn't find them. "Is this the entrance or not, sis?"

"This is it. I'm positive," Sonia announced, stepping out of the bushes toward the vine-covered wall. A sweep of her hand revealed a hidden door behind the plants, with a tarnished silver handle in place of a knob. "This is the door to the butler's pantry. Nobody besides Bartleby knows about it, except for me and his servants—well, back when he had servants. I used to sneak in here to see him all the time when we were younger."

"_You?_" Manic asked, glancing at her incredulously. "You mucked around in servants' quarters to see Bartleby."

Sonia's cheeks reddened. "Well, let's just say that Lady Windemere and I had some key ideological differences about the importance of curfew," she said, turning up her nose at the both of them.

"Would you just hurry up and knock already?" Sonic demanded, interrupting them.

Taking a deep breath, Sonia nodded, then rapped the carved bronze knocker five times. Then they waited.

"Are you sure he can even hear us from inside that gigantic house of his?" Sonic asked, eyeing the the upstairs windows eying.

"And if he hears us, will he let us stay?" Manic asked.

"Of course he will," Sonia said sharply, removing her hood to glare at them. "I know Bartleby. He might be a little full of himself sometimes, but his heart's in the right place. Be patient!"

Sure enough, a few moments later they all heard a loud shuffling behind the door. "_Who on Earth is calling upon me at this hour?_" a familiar, stuffy voice drawled loudly in long-suffering tones from inside the pantry. "_This isn't even my front door!_"

"Open up, Bartleby!" Sonia whispered shrilly, placing her hands squarely on her hips. "It's me!"

There was a long pause before the door opened, revealing a comically startled-looking Bartleby dressed in a frilly silk bathrobe that probably could have fed the resistance for a month. "Sonia? Whatever are you—" he gaped, eyes wide, then scowled as he realized she wasn't alone. "Oh. It's _you_ two."

"Great to see you too, Bartlebutt," Manic muttered under his breath. Sonic kicked him lightly behind his back.

"Bartleby, we need a place to stay," Sonia said in a no-nonsense tone of voice. "Just for the night. Robotnik found our whole headquarters and we had to make a break for it at the last second. We still don't know if everyone made it out safely."

"So you decide to come to _me_?" Bartleby shot back, sounding affronted. "You _know_ I'm always happy to see you, Sonia, but I cannot continue snooping around behind Dr. Robotnik's back to protect you and your brothers' childish crusade, every time your foolishness gets you in trouble with the law! Why, if Robotnik were to catch you here...I'd be completely ruined!"

"It's not a childish crusade, it's a resistance against tyranny and the wrongful ruler of Mobius! And if _he_ catches us out _there_," Sonic snarled heatedly, pointing toward the outer gates of the estate, "we'll be _roboticized!_ Not that a stuck-up rich boy like you would know anything about that!"

Manic was opening his mouth to join in when he caught sight of Sonia's face. She looked distraught, staring up at Bartleby with wide pleading eyes that somehow looked more vulnerable than Manic had ever seen her, even when she was crying.

"We—We don't have anywhere else to go," Sonia stammered lamely, her voice shaking and very quiet. Her hands twisted together nervously, but she didn't once break eye contact with Bartleby, who immediately froze.

He could only hold her gaze for a few seconds before he had to turn away, coughing awkwardly into his fist and suddenly appearing rather ashamed of himself. He stepped back to fully open the pantry door for them.

"Y-Yes, yes, of course," he said anxiously, gesturing them graciously inside. "I would never dream of turning you away, my dear. Come in, all of you."

They stepped inside. Bartleby closed the door behind them, with a creaking echo that reverberated throughout the pantry.

Manic caught Sonic's eye and the two exchanged a knowing, disgruntled look, before following their sister in Bartleby's wake.

Tonight was going to be a very long evening indeed.


End file.
